Transplacental acquisition of cytomegalovirus antibody. Observations with two different CMV strains.

Titrations of complement fixing antibody (c.f.a.) were done in paired sera of 127 women at delivery and cord blood of their babies using two different cytomegalovirus strains both of which had undergone many passages in WI-38 cells, With High strain 74% of the mother and 41% of the babies were negative at the serum dilution 1:4. With Towne strain the incidence of negative was 5% both among the mother and the newborns. Worth of mention is the study of correlation of the titers in the matched pairs of sera according to the strain. With High strain 23 of the babies had c.f.a. titers significantly higher than their mothers and 14 of them were from negative women. This situation could be suggestive of an active placental transfer of IgG globulins. No such disparities were found using Towne strain as antigen. 48 pairs of sera were then tested with both strains by indirect hemagglutination, indirect immunofluorescence and gel precipitin test. Results are discussed in relation to the possible differences in the antigenic composition of the two cytomegalovirus strains.